For each of the following situations you should:
- Discuss the appropriate investigative methods/techniques that you would suggest.
- Provide a detailed plan on how you would develop and carry out the investigation.
- Provide support (including the use of external citations) of why the method/technique would be useful in the situation.
Situation #1
As a result of being dissatisfied with the lack of “New York style” pizza in your local area, you opened a new venture over a year ago to address this market need. As you are employed full-time in the corporate world, this store was designed to be run by a store manager and to provide you with a passive income. As a result, you are not involved in the day-to-day activities of the store. In order to handle the daily operations of the store you hire a store manager that has extensive experience in running a pizza restaurant.
For the first six months of operation you had been pleased with the growth and overall performance of the venture. The store continued to generate consistent margins on sales growth of 10% plus month over month, which had exceeded your initial expectations. Customer reviews have continued to remain strong throughout this period with little variation in result.
Over the most recent 6 month period the sales growth has remained strong (although perhaps slightly down from the initial growth as would be expected). However, you have noticed a reduction in your margins. One of the drivers of this margin reduction appears to be an increased inventory burn in your pizza making supplies (dough, sauce, cheese, etc.) that seems out of line with the sales growth figures. You have recently brought this matter to the attention of your store manager, who has assured you that this type of margin decline is normal (and expected) as the increased volume has led to more waste due to product errors while handling peak-level volumes. You manager also pointed out that the increased volume has led to hiring needs which have been filled by inexperienced personnel, which is also leading to further product waste.
You intuition is telling you that the explanation provided does not align with the inventory burn level apparent in the financial statements. You suspect that fraudulent activity, such as free product or non-register sales, may be occurring in your store.
Situation #2
You have been hired to complete an investigation into a potential issue at a small gas station and convenience store operation. Due to the location of the business and the typical customers of this establishment, the store operates largely on a cash basis with more than 75% of sales handled with cash payments.
The store manager has reported a discrepancy between the daily cash receipts versus the gas holding tank measurements at the end of each week. As the misalignment has not been significant in any one week, but rather consistently disconnected, the manager is not sure if there could be ongoing theft by an employee or if the measurement issue is the result of some other issue (tank leakage, issues with the measurement process, etc.).
You have been asked to establish an approach to address the concern and provide a detailed plan to proceed through an investigation.
Your paper must be in a Word document of three to five pages. If you wish to include calculations in support of your response, place them in the form of a table within your paper. Format your paper in accordance with APA guidelines
0 comments